Month: August 2014

Rick Yancey’s “The 5th Wave” is a novel that will leave his reader’s adrenaline pumping and their thoughts in a state of chaos.

Humans like to think of aliens as the tiny, green, bug-eyed creatures that use flying saucers and death rays; the humanoids that give us a run for our money, but are still defeated by our superior skill at the end of the day.

Cassie knows different. Much different.

The Others have been planning the overtake of our green planet for thousands of years. They know how we think. They know how we fight. But most importantly, they know how to break us. The first wave of attack took out all electronics. The second, most of our land, forcing us to come together. The third ravaged the bodies of many, and the fourth was an assassination mission to finish us off. Or so we thought. Now at the edge of a possible fifth wave, Cassie struggles with her own mind as she fights to survive – only certain that she must make it to Camp Haven to reunite with her brother, who may not even be alive.

Ben Parish is in the middle of it all. Humanity has never been one to give up without a fight, and Camp Haven is the center of the resistance. By using confiscated alien technology, the military is training kid-soldiers to eradicate the invaders. However, not everything is as it seems, and Ben (newly dubbed “Zombie”) must learn to trust himself and his comrades to discover the truth.

I absolutely fell in love with “The 5th Wave” from the first chapter. In a world full of dystopian novels and alien lore, Yancey presents a novel that not only brings new concepts to the table, but makes them so vastly realistic that readers will have no challenge plunging into the story. I found the characters to be complex, and yet effortless to absorb and connect with. I admire the fact that the book teases your mind and makes you become emotionally involved, but is still a fairly smooth read. Yancey’s point of view (POV) transitions are seamless and embellish the story rather than causing a distraction for the reader, like many multiple-POV novels tend to do.

Full of catastrophic loss, the struggle to survive, and faint flickers of hope, I recommend “The 5th Wave” to fans of Stephen King, Margaret Peterson Haddix, and Veronica Roth.